Reform Act

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In the United Kingdom, Reform Act is commonly used to refer to legislation passed in the 19th century and early 20th century to enfranchise new groups of voters and to redistribute seats in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Contents

These include the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, and 1884, to increase the electorate for the House of Commons and remove certain inequalities in representation. The bill of 1832 disfranchised many boroughs which enjoyed undue representation and increased that of the large towns, at the same time extending the franchise, and was put through by the Whigs. The bill of 1867 was passed by the Conservatives under the urging of the Liberals, while that of 1882 was introduced by the Liberals and passed in 1884. These latter two bills provided for a more democratic representation. [1]

Background

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In the United Kingdom before 1832, one adult male in ten was eligible to vote in parliamentary elections. Moreover, the franchise varied a great deal. A few boroughs gave the vote to all male householders, but many rotten boroughs were under the control of a small group or sometimes a single rich aristocrat. Reforms had been proposed in the 18th century, both by radicals such as John Wilkes and by more conservative politicians such as William Pitt the Younger. However, there was strong opposition to reform, especially after the outbreak of the French Revolution. The cause was continued after 1792 by the London Corresponding Society.

Beginning in the 19th century, the parliamentary franchise was expanded and made more uniform through a series of Reform Acts beginning with the Great Reform Act in 1832. [2] These acts extended voting rights to previously disenfranchised citizens. Sources refer to up to six "Reform Acts", [3] [4] [5] although the earlier three in 1832, 1867/8 and 1884 are better known by this name. [note 1] Some other acts related to electoral matters also became known as Reform Acts. [11] [12]

There are many other electoral reform acts in the United Kingdom. Such legislation typically used Representation of the People Act as the short title, by which name the 1918, 1928 and other acts in the 20th century are better known. [13] [14] [note 2] The title Representation of the People Act was adopted in other countries of, or formerly part of, the British Empire through the spread of the Westminster parliamentary system. [15] [16]

The following Acts of Parliament are known as Reform Acts:

1832 Reform Act

The 1832 Reform Act was the most controversial of the electoral reform acts passed by the Parliament. The Act reapportioned Parliament in a way fairer to the cities of the old industrial north, which had experienced tremendous growth. The Act also did away with most of the "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs such as Old Sarum , which with only seven voters (all controlled by the local squire) was still sending two members to Parliament. This act not only re-apportioned representation in Parliament, thus making that body more accurately represent the citizens of the country, but also gave the power of voting to those lower in the social and economic scale, for the act extended the right to vote to any man owning a household worth £10, adding 217,000 voters to an electorate of 435,000. As many as one man in five (though by some estimates still only one in seven) now had the right to vote.

For many conservatives, this effect of the bill, which allowed the middle classes to share power with the upper classes, was revolutionary. Some historians argue that this transfer of power achieved in England what the French Revolution achieved eventually in France. The agitation preceding and following the first Reform Act (which Dickens observed at first hand as a shorthand Parliamentary reporter) made many people consider fundamental issues of society and politics.

The novel Middlemarch , by Mary Ann Evans ( George Eliot ) is set in the 1830s and mentions the struggle over the Reform Bills, though not as a major topic. Eliot's Felix Holt, the Radical , set in 1832, is a novel explicitly about the Great Reform Act.

1867 Reform Act

This extended the right to vote still further down the class ladder, adding just short of a million voters—including many workingmen—and doubling the electorate, to almost two million in England and Wales. It, too, created major shock waves in contemporary British culture, some of which appear in works such as Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy and John Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olive , as authors debated whether this shift of power would create democracy that would, in turn, destroy high culture.

The opposite case had been argued by the Chartists, who campaigned from 1838 for a wider reform. The movement petered out in the 1850s, but achieved most of its demands in the longer run.

1884 Reform Act

Only in 1884 did a majority of adult males gain the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Along with the 1885 Redistribution Act, this tripled the electorate again, giving the vote to most agricultural laborers.

1918, 1928 and 1969 Reform Acts

By this time, voting was becoming a right rather than the property of the privileged. However, women were not granted voting rights until the Act of 1918, which enfranchised all men over 21 and women over thirty. This last piece of gender discrimination was eliminated 10 years later (in 1928) by the Equal Franchise Act and the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1969.

Modern usage

The periodic redrawing of constituency boundaries is now dealt with by a permanent Boundary Commission in each part of the United Kingdom, rather than by a Reform Act. [24]

Some people in Britain, mostly associated with the Liberal Democrat political party, have called for a new "Great Reform Act" to introduce electoral changes they favour. These would include lowering the minimum voting age to 16 and introducing proportional representation. [25] [26] [27]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Various sources, books and texts commonly use this description. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
  2. ↑ For the narrative history see Llewellan Woodward, The Age of Reform, 1815–1870 (2nd ed. 1961) and Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement 1783-1867 (1959).

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References

  1. ↑ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). "Reform Bills"  . Encyclopedia Americana .
  2. ↑ Bedarida, Francois (17 June 2013). A Social History of England 1851-1990. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-136-09732-4.
  3. 1 2 Kitching, Paula. "Political Reform: Lesson Plan 6: Overview" (PDF). The History of Parliament. p. 3. Create one of the following charts for each of the six Reform Acts{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. 1 2 "1969 Representation of the People Act". www.parliament.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2021. 1969-sixth-reform-act{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. 1 2 "Members of Parliament Chadderton". www.chadderton-historical-society.org.uk. Retrieved 2 January 2021. Act of 1969 (also known as the Sixth Reform Act){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  6. ↑ Johnston, Neil (1 February 2021). "The History of the Parliamentary Franchise". House of Commons Library. Reform Acts of 1832, 1867/8 and 1884{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ↑ Scott-Baumann, Michael (22 February 2016). Access to History: Protest, Agitation and Parliamentary Reform in Britain 1780-1928 for Edexcel. Hodder Education. ISBN   978-1-4718-3848-4.
  8. ↑ Reekes, Andrew (19 September 2015). Speeches that Changed Britain: Oratory in Birmingham. History West Midlands. ISBN   978-1-905036-26-4.
  9. ↑ Doogan, John; Girvan, Edith (2004). Changing life in Scotland and Britain: 1830s-1930s. Heinemann. ISBN   978-0-435-32692-0.
  10. ↑ Wilson, Christopher (5 December 2003). Understanding A/S Level Government Politics. Manchester University Press. ISBN   978-0-7190-6081-6.
  11. 1 2 Wright, D. G. (30 July 2014). Democracy and Reform 1815 - 1885. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-317-88325-8.
  12. 1 2 writer.), Andrew Reid (political (1887). We must fight it out!-And why?.
  13. ↑ Alder and Syrett. Constitutional and Administrative Law. (Palgrave Law Masters). 11th Edition. 2017. p 294. Birch. The British System of Government. 10th Edition. Routledge. 1998. Taylor & Francis e-Library. 2006. p 17.
  14. ↑ See, for example, the definition in section 8(1) of the Representation of the People Act 1884, read with the definition of the Registration Acts in section 8(2)
  15. ↑ "How the Westminster parliamentary system was exported around the world". University of Cambridge. 2 December 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
  16. ↑ Julian Go (2007). "A Globalizing Constitutionalism?, Views from the Postcolony, 1945-2000". In Arjomand, Saïd Amir (ed.). Constitutionalism and political reconstruction. Brill. pp. 92–94. ISBN   978-9004151741.
  17. ↑ Evans, Eric J. (28 January 2008). The Great Reform Act of 1832. Routledge. ISBN   978-1-134-81603-3.
  18. ↑ Francis Barrymore Smith (1966). The Making of the Second Reform Bill. CUP Archive.
  19. ↑ Hayes, William A. (1982). The Background and Passage of the Third Reform Act. Garland Pub. ISBN   978-0-8240-5156-3.
  20. ↑ Dawson, Michael (25 March 2010). "Money and the real impact of the Fourth Reform Act". The Historical Journal. 35 (2): 369–381. doi:10.1017/S0018246X0002584X. S2CID   155070834.
  21. ↑ Tanner, Duncan (1983). The Parliamentary Electoral System, the Fourth Reform Act and the Rise of Labour in England and Wales.
  22. ↑ Albjerg, Victor Lincoln; Albjerg, Esther Marguerite Hall; Albjerg, Marguerite Hall (1951). Europe from 1914 to the Present. McGraw-Hill. p. 257.
  23. ↑ Cole, G. D. H. (7 December 2018). British Working Class Politics, 1832-1914. Routledge. ISBN   978-0-429-82018-2.
  24. ↑ Johnston, Neil (1 February 2021). "Constituency boundary reviews and the number of MPs".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  25. ↑ Stone, Greg (30 July 2009). "It's time for the next Great Reform Act". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  26. ↑ Toynbee, Polly (31 January 2014). "Giving 16-year-olds the vote can be Labour's Great Reform Act". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 January 2021.
  27. ↑ "A new Great Reform Act is needed to limit the absurdities of our constitution". The Independent. 6 May 2015. Retrieved 2 January 2021.

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